Friday, May 31, 2013

So the answer really is, “nothing”.

Rolled in this morning at around 1:15. Of course the flight was late.

Not chronically late, like the time I was two and a half hours late getting back from Barcelona to Vienna on a Sunday, which subsequently meant that I had to take a taxi from “Wien Mitte”, since the subway system had by then shut down, messing up my whole, “I can get from my front door all the way to the airport and back for eight Euros” program.

Gah! Total transportation budget out the window. I was miffed.

Actually, not so much. I think I would have been mightily upset if there hadn’t been taxis hanging around, or if I perhaps didn’t have the fare in my pocket.

No, this was more like about 20 minutes late which, considering it was the last flight of the day, is almost something to be expected, since most of these types of flights consist of flying back and forth between two stops, so if there’s any “issues”, it’s a domino effect.

Not sure if the crew would have had to turn around and fly out again in the morning? I would hope not. We were both a little groggy this morning, but neither of us were faced with ferrying a bunch of people half way across the country.

It’s still hot and humid here, but the new air conditioning is working just tickety-boo. Mind you, there is a bit of a breeze outside, and I did cut the grass last night at around 8:30 or so, and it was tolerable. (well, depending on your take on “tolerable”?)

Very easy to work up a sweat of course, but it would have been way worse in the middle of the afternoon.

No thanks.

So what was I saying? Right.

From time to time, when Travelling Companion comes home from work, or when I have the car and pick her up from work, there is that one question that gets asked. “So, what did you do today?” And most of the time I just say, “Meh, nothing.”

I think some days she actually believes me, but truth be told, whatever the hell it is I do all day is so helter skelter, that coming up with an actual comprehensive (and comprehensible) answer is just too much of a challenge.

Today however, I decided to finally tackle something that has been annoying me for going on twenty years now. Nothing to do with my personal appearance or well being either. There are many areas of improvement there, but let’s not do that.

No, I’m talking about the door to what is now the sewing room, which has always been just the worst example of how to hang a door I think I’ve ever seen.

First of all, houses do “settle”. So back in the nineties at some point, I had to half-assedly relocate the strike, so that the door would actually latch.

Not a very tidy job I’ll admit, but there was always the intention to “get back to that one day”, so I wasn’t too concerned about aesthetics. That’s my excuse anyway.

The door stop had already been removed on that previous occasion, and I simply hadn’t bothered to put the thing back again.

I also must have messed around with the jam, since I discovered that someone had nailed it back in place with ardox (spiral cut) finishing nails. The original nails in this house are smooth. A lot easier to remove too, by the way.

So fine, it sort of worked. The thing was though, the door itself wasn’t hung properly. The top hinge was way off, and that was from the original installation. Where I have the tip of that screwdriver, the hinge is out of alignment by a good eighth inch.

No amount of adjustment is going to sort the thing out.

So, it’s gotta come out.

Not a big deal if you have a reciprocating saw. You may recall our little toilet seat surgery of a few weeks back? Handy dandy tool, even though the one I have isn’t cordless.

I sometimes lust after a cordless version, but since I’m not one to scamper up on roof tops, thereby having to run miles of extension cord, it’s pretty hard to justify.

So, this is going to be a “do over”. Like when you screw up as a kid. Just do it over.

Of course, the last time I messed around with this door jamb, I was really only trying to make it work a little better. I didn’t really succeed. However, since I removed and remodelled a closet a few years back, I now had a spare door jamb squirreled away in the attic of the shed.

I’m feeling pretty good about this.

I was feeling even better that the thing was too long to start with, which mean being able to cut off a good inch of the messed up part, but then when I held it up there, there was just one little problem!

Oh c’mon! Are you kidding me?

Virtually all of the door jambs in this house are five and a half inches. Not this one. It’s six and a quarter. (These were done in the pre metric days) There are a couple that are just…six and a bit. What? Were they just ripping them up as they went along?? Oh gawd.

The door right next to it? Five and a half. The door leading out to the veranda? Five and a half.

For some reason, known only to the silly bugger who installed that door, it’s an odd size. Well, actually I kind of “get it”, since it’s right next to the chimney, and there were some issues with the framing. So they layered on the plaster, shimmed out the trim, and that was as good as it got. And that wasn’t very good.

So the short term solution was to make some lunch and bitch about it here.

I’m here all afternoon. Be sure and tip your server.

I’m sure I can phone around and see if there are wider jambs to be had out there, but I’ll be hard pressed to match the look of what’s there. I may consider cobbling something together from the parts I have on hand.

I know what you are saying. Our old house has the same problem. When we moved in there was a surprise. We got the sofa through two doors. No problem. The next door - we jammed. What the *^^&! Turns out that some doors have the same size, others are narrower because of the size of the wall. In former times they adjusted the size of the door accordingly. No standard size available. We had to get the sofa out of the house again and carried around to the second entrance. From there it went in without a problem. About wheelchair accessibility - forget about it and keep your fingers crossed. The charm of an old house....

Well, I've been getting too many spam comments showing up. Just a drag, so we'll go another route and hope that helps. So, we won't be hearing anything more from Mr. Nony Moose. I guess I'll just have to do without that Gucci purse.